Investigators are “90 per cent sure” the Russian plane crash which killed 224 people was caused by a bomb, it has been reported.
The Airbus A321 crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Sharm al-Sheikh tourist resort eight days ago.
Islamic State militants fighting Egyptian security forces in Sinai said they brought it down.
“The indications and analysis so far of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb,” an Egyptian investigation team member said.
“We are 90 percent sure it was a bomb.”
Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam announced on Saturday that the plane appeared to have broken up in mid-air while it was being flown on auto-pilot, and that a noise had been heard in the last second of the cockpit recording.
But he said it was too soon to draw conclusions about why the plane crashed.
Muqaddam said other possibilities could include a fuel explosion, metal fatigue in the plane or lithium batteries overheating.
He said debris was scattered over a 13-km area “which is consistent with an in-flight break-up”.
The disaster is being described as another watershed moment for the aviation industry.
“What happened in Sharm al-Sheikh last week, and to a lesser extent with the… (Germanwings) aircraft, are game changers for our industry,” Emirates Airlines President Tim Clark.
“They have to be addressed at industry level because no doubt the countries — U.S., Europe — I would think will make some fairly stringent, draconian demands on the way aviation works with security.”
Clark said he had ordered a security review but was not suspending any flights as a result of the disaster. Emirates does not operate regular flights to Sharm al-Sheikh.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond also said the incident could lead to changes in flight security.
“If this turns out to be a device planted by an ISIL operative or by somebody inspired by ISIL, then clearly we will have to look again at the level of security we expect to see in airports in areas where ISIL is active,” Hammond told the BBC.
Islamic State militants fighting security forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula have said they brought down the aircraft as revenge for Russian air strikes against Islamist fighters in Syria. They said they would eventually tell the world how they carried out the attack.
If the group was responsible, it would have carried out one of the highest profile killings since al Qaeda flew passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center in September 2001.
Russia has returned 11,000 of its tourists from Egypt in the last 24 hours, RIA news agency said on Sunday, a fraction of the 80,000 Russians who were stranded by the Kremlin’s decision on Friday to halt all flights to Egypt.
In St Petersburg, where the flight was headed on Oct. 31, the bell of St Isaac’s Cathedral rang 224 times and a service was held in memory of the victims.
Russia has sent specialists to conduct a safety audit of Egypt’s airports and to provide recommendations on additional measures, Arkady Dvorkovich, deputy prime minister, was quoted as saying by Russian agencies.
Dvorkovich, the head of a government group created on Friday to deal with suspended flights to Egypt, added a second group was going to Egypt on Sunday and a third would be sent later.
A British official said on Saturday it could take 10 days for all British tourists to be flown home.
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